Artyfacts from the Nyneties #5: Sainsbury’s Bière de Garde, 1991

The image above comes from the Sainsbury’s supermarket in-house magazine for November 1991 and is a great reminder that interesting beer didn’t arrive in Britain in 2010.

Here’s the text that accompanied the product shot under the groansome headline THE BEER WORTH GUARDING:

The new Sainsbury’s Biere de Garde derives its name from the traditional brewing metiiods used at tlie brewery in Benifontaine, in the Nord-pas de Calais region of France. This strong beer, which is made with seven malts, spends six weeks ‘kept’ in special chilled tanks in a locked Garde room while top fermentation takes place. Hence Biere de Garde – ‘kept’ beer.

The design of the bottle, and the label, is a striking blend of the modern and traditional, and the amber beer is, in the words of the buyer: ‘robust, delivering a rich bouquet and an intense full, rounded flavour.’

Biere de Garde is available in 123 stores at £1.79.

Retro Sainsbury’s branding is very cool right now — some of it has aged rather wonderfully — and this Biere de Garde isn’t bad at all.

You can read the whole issue as a PDF via the JS Journal Online pages at the Sainsbury’s Archive, and there’s more on the arrival of ‘world beer’ in Britain in Brew Britannia, especially on pages 106 to 111.